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Ramnik Kavia

Born: Baroda, Gujarat, India, died: 20^th November 2004 aged 53 (Labour)

Ramnik Kavia was born in Baroda, India and was educated at the Technical High School and at Kenya Polytechnic, Nairobi. He joined his family's engineering and fabrication business there. As a result of the Africanisation policies of the Kenyan government, he had to leave the country and arrived in Leicester in December 1974 where worked with a number of local firms. He was elected to the Leicester City Council in 1986, representing Latimer ward and then Belgrave from 1996. He served on numerous committees and his main interest was planning and regeneration. He was Lord Mayor of Leicester for the year 2003-2004. He also served as governor at Catherine Infants and Junior Schools.

He died following heart bypass surgery, when a drug intended to be taken orally was injected straight into his bloodstream. His brother Amrit was elected to the Council in the bye-election that followed. Tragically, he died three months after being elected.

Sources: Leicester City Council, Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000, author’s personal knowledge

Charles Edward Keene (senior)

Born: Indian Ocean, 20^th Feb 1868, died: 1953 (I.L.P. & Labour Party)

Charles Edward Keene was born to regular soldier on a sailing ship en route to India on the Indian Ocean. His father was in the Indian Army and he was educated at an Indian army school. He returned to Britain in his late teens. Following the death of his father, his mother remarried, but his stepfather’s excessive drinking brought ruin to the family. Charles was forced to sell newspapers on the streets of Bradford to supplement the family income. As a result he was a lifelong supporter of the Temperance Movement.

He came to Leicester from Bradford with 6/- in his pocket in 1899 and successfully established several different businesses in the city, which included the Mutual Clothing and Supply Company, as well as box manufacture and die stamping. He was an ardent speaker on behalf of the Leicester Temperance Society and was associated with the Belgrave Hall Wesleyan Church. Thomas Redfern recalled that Keene was a good speaker, in the ‘Methodist style’, who generally spoke in a conciliatory manner. He was involved in leading the unemployed in 1921. He had been an unsuccessful labour candidate six times in elections for the City Council before getting elected for Aylestone in 1924. He held various positions in the Independent Labour Party and succeeded George Banton as president of the I.L.P. in 1924. He retired from the Council in 1938.

Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 8^th February 1924, Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927

Charles Robert Keene

Born: Bradford 21^st Sept 1891 died: 1977 (I.L.P. & Labour Party)

Charles Robert Keene was one of a family of 12 and attended Harrison Road School. After working with in his father’s business, he began to study for the Wesleyan ministry. However, he enlisted in the RAMC in 1915 and within a few months was promoted to the rank of sergeant. He spent 4½ years with the forces, chiefly in the Hospital Ship services in the Mediterranean.

On returning to civilian life, Charles Keene resumed his activities at the Clarendon Park Wesleyan Church, where he occupied various offices including Circuit Temperance secretary and society class leader. He also returned to his business career, becoming managing director of his father’s business the Mutual Clothing and Supply Company and Kingstone Ltd during the late 1920s.

He became a City Councillor for Charnwood in 1926 and was secretary of the Labour Group for nine years during the 1930s. He became its leader in 1940 and was also chairman for three years. He became chairman of the Planning Committee in 1946 and led the City’s slum clearance and redevelopment programme during the 1950s and 60s. He was Lord Mayor in 1953 and was dominant in the field of education until 1960. (He had to retire from chairing the Education Committee because he had reached the age of 70)

He was an opponent of comprehensive education and ensured the retention of the 11 plus exam in Leicester. He was awarded the freedom of the City in 1962 and until 1999 was commemorated by Charles Keene College-now Leicester College. In later life he lived in  Gaulby.

Sources: Howes, C. (ed), Leicester: Its Civic, Industrial, Institutional and Social Life, Leicester 1927, Leicester City Council, Roll of Lord Mayors 1928-2000

Edward Kell

Born: circa 1831, Nottinghamshire died: July-Sept 1908

Edward Kell was a shoe rivetter and a Liberal-Radical of the old school. He became the first president (part-time) of the National Union of Operative Boot and Shoe Rivetters and Finishers in 1883. He was elected to the School Board and to the Town Council. Along with George Sedgewick, he used his position on the School Board to campaign against children working at home. He resigned from the presidency in July 1890, shortly after attacking the militant movement in the union which was then led by T. F. Richards among others.

Sources: Fox, Alan, A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers,1958, Census returns

James King Kelly

Born: 5th October 1865 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)

J.K. Kelly left the Clyde Street Wesleyan school at the age of 13 and after working as an errand boy, he then trained as a minister and entered the Methodist Ministry in the early 1890s. In 1893. he was drawn to socialism after reading Robert Blatchford’s ‘Merrie England.’ He left the ministry in 1900 and became a dentist, opening a practice in the Thomas Cook building close to the Clock Tower. He was well known as a public speaker and apparently he won many 'converts' by his powerful oratory. Following the refusal of the Labour Party nationally to support the candidature of Geo Banton for parliamentary by-election in 1913, he gave his support to the British Socialist Party’s candidate Hartley.

James Kelly was elected to the Board of Guardians for 1907-10 for Abbey ward and was a Town Councillor from 1909-23.

Although he claimed he was never a jingo, he fully supported the First World War. In 1917, he briefly resigned from the I.L.P. and gave his support to the National Socialist Party (the pro war faction of the B.S.P.) He chaired one or two meetings and was even touted as a possible candidate to stand against MacDonald. He must have had second thoughts about this and remained in the I.L.P. and Labour Party.

He was president of the I.L.P. and chairman of the Labour Party (1921) at various times. In 1921, he moved a resolution, which condemned the action of the police in dealing with a demonstration by the unemployed in Rupert Street, saying:

“when the wounds were in the main part on the back of the head, it was natural that feelings of anger would be provoked and deeds of resentment would be committed.”

He was a a friend and admirer of Tom Barclay and edited Barclay’s memoirs published in 1934. In 1937, along with Will Owen, he supported the Unity campaign to bring about a united front between the I.L.P. Communist Party and Labour party. He was also a member of the Left Book Club in the late 1930s.

Sources: Justice 14th June 1917, Leicester Pioneer, 21^st March 1924

Samuel Kemp

Born: Quorn (Liberal & Co-operator)

Samuel Kemp was the eldest of nine children and started work at the age of 10½ in a shoe factory. He eventually ended up working at the Leicester Co-operative Hosiery Society’s factory in Cranbourne Street and remained there for12½ years until it was bought by C.W.S. He represented the union on the Trades Council and served on the executive of the union. He was elected to the board of L.C.S. in 1897.He was elected president Wigston Hosiers in 1909 and continued in those positions well into the 1920s. He was also on the committee of the Leicester Co-operative Press. He was vice president of the East Leicester Liberal Association in 1926.

Sources: Leicester Co-operative Society, (1898) Co-operation in Leicester, Leicester: A Souvenir of the 47^th Co-operative Congress, Manchester 1915

George Albert Kenney

Born: 1868. died Westbourne Street, Leicester 5th January 1935 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)

Albert Kenney left Elbow Lane School at the age of 9 to work at Burrows brickyards for 1/- or 2/-per week. Then went into the hosiery trimming trade working for Messrs Hawley and Johnston's where he became an active trade unionist, acting as negotiator in various trades disputes on behalf of the Trimmers Society. He was president of the Leicester Trimmers Union for 37 years years. He spent over 30 years on the Trades Council and was president in 1905 & 1924.

He had a reputation as the ’John Blunt’ of the Labour movement, always frank and outspoken and willing to call a spade a spade. He was elected to the Town Council in 1905 for Aylestone and was reported to have appealed to the voters because “he was in favour of finding work for the workless, decent housing and the feeding of starving children.” He was chair of the Unemployed Committee and active in the Right To Work Agitation in the 1900s. He  became an alderman in 1926. He retired from the council in 1931 after a breakdown in his health. He was treasurer of the Labour Party 1903-1910? and was member of the Leicester Labour Party Executive and president of the Leicester Auxiliary Workers Association.

Sources: Leicester Pioneer 10^th October 1908, 1^st February 1924, Leicester Mercury, 7th January 1935

Agnes Archer Kilgour (Evans)

Born 1851, died: 1924 (Women’s Liberal Association)

Agnes Kilgour came to Leicester from Cheltenham to become headmistress of the Belmont House School on New Walk. She was Anna Beale’s partner and successor. In 1887, she became the first joint secretary of the Leicester and Leicestershire Women’s Suffrage Association. Agnes Evans, as she was after 1895, was a co-opted member of the Council’s education committee. She was also a member of the School Board and persuaded its chairman Joseph Woods to start kindergartens in elementary schools.

She worked with Catherine Gittins to establish the Leicester branch of the National Union of Women Workers (later National Council of Women) In 1906, she became the first president of the Health Society which had been established that year with the aim of a reducing infant mortality in the town, through educating mothers. She was also a committee member of the Women’s Liberal Association.

Sources: Isabel Ellis, Records Of Nineteenth Century Leicester , Shirley Aucott, Mothercraft and Maternity,1997

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William Arthur Larrad

Born Leicester, 23rd November 1870, died Leicester December 1957 (I.L.P)

W.A. Larrad was a boot blocking machine operator, prominent spiritualist and was elected assistant secretary of the I.L.P. at its AGM in 1895. In 1908 he wrote: “A Romance of A Board of Guardians” which was published in weekly instalments in the Leicester Pioneer. It tells of the just deserts handed out to the local guardians by a reforming government for the crime of driving the unemployed to suicide. In a letter to Leicester Daily Post in 1906 he describes the 'Labour Test' where the unemployed were given manual labour:

The whole idea of the test and the spirit in which it should be carried out is that if an able-bodied man applies to the Guardians they should be able to test his bone-fides. He is offered a task disagreeable, and with a low rate of payment, not as work for wages, but as a test. Hence its name. But when it is applied to a man week after week, and year after year, as all test and nothing else behind it, the whole business is made absurd. Surely it is about time that this as a system of relief went into the melting-pot of Parliamentary reform, and something fresh in the way of legislation was brought forward, which, as well as giving relief for the time being, would put a man on his legs again.

Larrad was also a photographer who supplied pictures to the Leicester Pioneer. It is  likely that he took the celebrated photos of the march of the unemployed to London in 1905. He also photographed the burnt out shell of St George's Church in 1911. He lived on Willow Street and was active in support of Labour in the Latimer ward.

In 1921, following George White's suicide, he was appointed as secretary to the Distress Committee. In the wake of the unemployed demonstrations and riot of that year, the Committee began, rather late in the day, to operate a scheme to provide work for the unemployed. This was in conjunction with the Guardians and City Council. He continued to work in the Public Assistance Department until he retired.

His brother Charles Larrad, born Dec 1868 was one of the founders to the Leicester Labour Party, he moved to Derby in 1910.

Sources: Leicester Daily Post, 5th December 1906, Leicester Pioneer July 11^th, 29^th August, 19^th September 1908, Leicester Daily Post, 13th January 1921, census returns

Martin Leader

Born Leicestershire c1843 (Leicester Rivetters’ and Finishers’ Section)

In the early 1870s, Martin Leader was the secretary of the Leicester Rivetters’ and Finishers’ Section of the old Amalgamated Cordwainers’ Association. In 1873, he was the chief architect of a secession from the parent union which led to the formation of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers. The mechanisation of the industry probably made this split inevitable, though Leader added a degree of acrimony to the whole affair. He was also involved in an attempt to set up co-operative shoe manufacturing society with William Inskip and Thomas Smith. He was a member of the School Board from 1876-77. By the 1880s, he had become a struggling small-scale employer  employing 56 men and boys. After loosing money for many years, he became bankrupt in 1894.

Sources: Leicester Chronicle, 2nd June 1894, Bill Lancaster, Radicalism Co-operation and Socialism, Alan Fox, A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers, 1958, census returns

Maria Leafe

Born: Hucknall, Notts 1879 (I.L.P.& Labour Party)

Maria Leafe was the daughter of an unemployed miner and wanted to become a teacher. Although she did well at school, her family circumstances meant that it was impossible for her her to continue with her education. Consequently, she left school at the age of 13 to help her father in a general store he had taken on.

In 1902, she married a railway clerk and came to Leicester. She became the first secretary of the Leicester Railway Women’s Guild and became minute secretary of the Women’s Labour League. In 1910 she has joined the I.L.P.  and later became president of the Women’s Section of the Labour Party.

During the 1919 railway strike, she played a prominent role as a speaker in support of the railwaymen’s cause. She was much in demand as a speaker in the Market Place and elsewhere. She was elected to the Board of Guardians in 1924 and stood for the council for Aylestone in 1925.

Sources: Leicester Pioneer, 29^th February 1924

Kewal Singh Lehal

Born April 15 1934, died June 1981 (Indian Workers’ Association G.B.)

K.S. Lehal was an activist in the Indian Workers Association (GB) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) He was a founder member of the Inter Racial Solidarity Campaign (IRSC) in 1969 and active in the anti racist demonstrations and campaigns of the 1970s.

Source: author’s personal knowledge

Nicholas Lee-Overy

Born 9th February 1962, died 17th December 1999 (Socialist Workers Party)

From 1995, Nick Lee-Overy was a youth worker at Highfields Community Centre and died suddenly at the age of 37. He was a political activist throughout his adult life, joining the Labour Party and CND whilst in his teens. He became a Socialist Workers Party member in 1993, following an Anti Nazi League demonstration. He became branch secretary of Leicester East S.W.P. and was international officer for Leicester City UNISON. He played a central role in anti-deportation campaigns and moves to integrate asylum seekers into the local community.

Source: Socialist Worker

Charles Ley

Born: c1896

Charles Ley was elected as Chairman of the Unemployed Executive in 1921. He was arrested by the police shortly after a demonstration outside the Poor Law offices in Rupert Street. Following his arrest, a 3,000 strong crowd converged on the police station in the Town Hall where he was being held to demand his release. The police were trapped inside extinguishing their lights, leaving the Town Hall in complete darkness.

Accidentally the crowd pushed the front row of their comrades into the station where they were promptly arrested. It was then that the missiles began to fly. A glass bottle shattered on the floor inside the entrance and a volley of stones, bricks and granite sets followed, hitting two policemen. The police then emerged from the station, many with batons drawn, whilst reinforcements in the shape of mounted police arrived at the rear. The demonstration promptly scattered.

At his trial, Ley was accused of kicking a police inspector. Ley's late employer gave evidence to his good character and industriousness. A number of witnesses also testified, that prior to his arrest he had not been injured. He was sent to prison for one month.

Source: Leicester Pioneer Sept 1921

Sarah Eveline Lines

Born: Belgrave circa 1883 (W.S.P.U.)

Eva Lines was a Board School teacher at Ellis Avenue School and an active Suffragette prior to World War One.

Sources: Sources: Richard Whitmore, Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester, Papers of Annie Lines

Isobel Logan

Born Sheffield 8th January 1875. died: Henley, Oxfordshire 17th July 1956,  (Women’s Liberal Association, WSPU)

Isobel Logan was a committed Liberal and the founder of the Harborough Women’s Liberal Association and its secretary and president. Her father was the wealthy John William Logan or "Paddy" Logan, the Liberal MP for Market Harborough. (see below) She frequently accompanied her father on speaking engagements, sometimes speaking herself.

In 1894, the 19 year old Isobel, sat on the platform with her father and delivered an address pointing out that married women were not prevented from voting in local elections provided they were not qualified in respect to the same property as their husbands.  She urged women to them to take the full advantage of this right. She played in the Women's cricket team for East Langton.

Isobel had become increasingly dissatisfied by the lack of action by the Women’s Liberal Association on the question of women’s rights. In 1908, she resigned from the presidency of the Association, saying it that ‘the question of women's suffrage is so important and its continued denial so great an injustice to women, that it is impossible for me to belong to an association that does not put the question before others.’

She cut quite a dash when she attended suffrage meetings in a motor car and soon after joining the WSPU, she took employment as a bookbinder. In June 1908, she was among 27 women who were arrested following a deputation to Parliament when windows were smashed in Whitehall and Downing Street. Rather than pay a fine, she opted to go prison. Her father was reported to be very proud of his daughter. Dorothy Pethwick and Dorothy Bowker (both WSPU organisers) were imprisoned with her and later came to Leicester to recuperate after being on hunger strike. Her father wrote:

My daughter Isabel has just come home, so I learn at first hand the punishment meted out to her and twenty-five other women for the awful crime of endeavouring to make a speech in Parliament-square in support of their belief that in justice and equity women cannot be denied a voice in the selection of those who make the laws that they are compelled to obey. Do the men and women of England really know that these political prisoners have solitary confinement twenty-three hours out of every twenty-four!

 Following her release, she continued to speak on the issue of women's suffrage and sweated labour and at one meeting she spoke for an hour and half. In 1939, she was living in Henley with her private secretary and two domestic servants.

Sources: Census, New York Times, July 2^nd 1908, Leicester Chronicle, 10th November 1894, 9th March 1895, 9th May 1908 15th April 1911, Leicester Daily Post 3rd & 14th July 1908, Richard Whitmore, Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester

A Land Nationalisation conference organised in March 1918.

William Henry Lowe

Born: Leicester c1856 died 1921 (NUBSO & I.L.P.)

William Lowe was the son of a framework knitter and he became a clicker in the shoe trade. He was active in the union and became secretary of the Leicester No 2 branch of NUBSO shortly after it was formed in 1890. In 1891, he was elected as treasurer of the National Union and a member of the National executive. He was also treasurer of the Trades Council, where, in 1902, he opposed a proposition from the I.L.P. to give women the vote. In 1908, he was one of the Labour candidate for Westcotes, by which time his wife Amy Jane Lowe (born Bedford c1856-1940) had become an active suffragette. He was one of  Leicester’s five ’working men magistrates,’ featured in local Labour publicity in 1911.

Sources: Alan Fox, A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Workers, 1958, Census, Richard Whitmore, Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester, The Labour Party Conference 1911, Official Souvenir, Leicester 1911

Peter Lowman

Born: 9^th Apr 1943, died December 1994 (Communist Party)

Pete Lowman was an official of the National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers Union during from the 1970s until his death at the age of 51. He was a member of the Communist Party and a director of the Leicestershire Co-op. Although he had a pragmatic approach to politics in Britain, he did not share the British Communist Party’s condemnation of  the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.

Source: author’s personal knowledge

Amos Lythall

Born: Market Bosworth, circa 1836 died: May 1908 (Liberal & Co-operator)

Amos Lythall was president of the L.C.S. from 1893-1908. He was a well known temperance advocate and a Liberal who was described as “A man of strong conviction, when he had made his up his mind….he would stand by it even if he stood alone.” He was a boot factor or dealer. He was also a supporter of the co-operative productive societies like Equity shoes. In 1890 he told the Co-operative Congress that:

the Wholesale Societies ought to be the medium for distributing the goods produced by the productive societies, but instead of doing that they (the Wholesale) were doing their utmost to crush some of these out of existence. (“ No”) It was of no use for small productive societies to attempt federating together while they had all the resources of the great Wholesale to fight against.

 After turning on the new electric lights in the co-op store in High Street for the first time in 1893, Lythall said,

....co-operators wanted no revolution and no anarchy, they merely wanted just and equal laws for everyone - a fair field and no favour. The whole management of their system was by working-men for working-men generally. (Applause.) He was convinced that if working-men joined that society in time of prosperity they would accumulate sufficient profits to enable them to tide over any time of depression, and there would not be the distress and poverty that now existed. If the money spent in drink were invested in the co-operative movement such a thing as poverty would be unknown.

Sources: Co-operative News 13th December 1890, Leicester Chronicle 30th December 1893, Leicester Co-operative Record June 1908, Leicester: A Souvenir of the 47^th Co-operative Congress, Manchester 1915

© Ned Newitt Last revised: September 14, 2024.